


Numbing Agent

by CountBassy



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:23:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21691366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountBassy/pseuds/CountBassy
Summary: Destruction of self, this is old magicWith all of its past and presents to shareNumbing agent. Numbing agent.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Numbing Agent

Seeing someone so headstrong, so much so it's a fault, so out of his own control is a strange thing. So young and full of life just days ago, the officers of the DPD stand in silence in the room of one of their own. Gavin Reed. 

In a busy, buzzing hospital in downtown Detroit, he lay in a river of tubes and needles. It hurts to look at him, it causes a clench in the heart no matter how one may have felt about him. He wasn't exactly well liked. 

But here they are. The walls are beige and as open as the hospital would like them to seem, they close in every chance they get. The beep and hum of the machines in the walls only bring them in closer. It'll cave soon enough, they think. 

It's weird. Someone so abrasive as Gavin being so vulnerable. 

Even weirder is the fact that his partner refuses to step into the room. Nines, normally so controlled, serious as an Android could possibly be, seems scared, almost, to see him as he is. As soon as Connor had brought him to the door, those cool blue eyes peer into the window only to turn away in a huff. 

"Nines-" 

"I'll be outside." Nothing more came of it. 

Even Connor was bewildered. Usually so precise in reading his "brother", he's unable to now.   
-  
It was hours before they all decided to leave. Hank coming out of the room with a full body sigh. As much as Gavin was a little shit to him, he was like family to Hank at this point. Knowing he looked up to him, picked up mannerisms from him, aspired to be him and worked damn hard at it, made him almost like a second son. As often as Hank wished he could kick his ass sometimes. 

Now Connor watches him with measured worry, wondering if he'd be able to handle another loss so close to. 

The ventilator presses one more breath into his lungs as they leave. It's all routine. In and out. 

One.

Two. 

One. 

Two.

Then Nines enters, when they're alone. The ventilator grates on his audio component. It's too calm and measured for his liking. Nothing like Gavin, always with his ticked off huffing. 

His eyes are closed too, not narrowed in a glare or thoughtfully in a gaze. It seemed like those were the only two expressions he had. One was reserved for Nines himself though, in private. 

His mouth is a thin line behind the oxygen mask and the tube attached to it. It's not in his usual snarl or the little, awkward smile he gives only to Nines and Tina. Sometimes Hank. Connor, only if he's lucky. 

It's so unusual for him. So strange that it makes Nines Thirium stutter in his veins. His pump clenches enough for him to pull a face. He doesn't even register the wetness on his face. He wasn't even aware that he could do that, actually cry. His model had absolutely no use for the function. He wasn't like Connor, needing expression to get information. 

He's puzzled. 

It's over quickly enough that he doesn't bother wiping them away, but he's still stunned. 

Equally so when he glances in the mirror above Gavin's bed, his nose tinged blue with a sad flush. Didn't know he could do that either. His eyes didn't get red like a grieving human's, but they were glassy and tearful, unwilling to shed them. 

It was bizarre to Nines to feel himself moving without giving himself an order to do so, slow and hesitant towards the bed to reach out and touch Gavin's hand, despite it being attached to an IV. 

He thinks about the fact that he'll be going home alone that night. 

They weren't anything official. Nothing serious. 

Nothing at all, really. 

But Nines remembers the way Gavin rolled his eyes at his lost looking expression after the revolution, deviancy confusing him and leaving him without a place to go, unwilling to bother Hank with another body under his roof. 

"C'mon, tin-can." A tilt of the head in the general direction of his dingy car. 

He rolled his eyes harder when Nines was hesitant to touch the dirty handle. 

He did it eventually. And the rest is history. He took to living with Gavin's stubbornness the way Connor took to Hank's brashness. A balance was created later, and trust is what caused Nines to catch Gavin dancing in the kitchen to COIN. 

They don't talk about that. 

They don't talk about the time Nines accidently cracked the chassis of his hand under his skin and Gavin was noticeably worried. 

They don't talk about the time they almost kissed in the garage. 

Or the time they did kiss in the back yard. 

Never spoke of it, and now the silence of all those non-conversations deafens Nines more than Gavin's forced breathing. 

He turns off his audio receptors. 

Pulls his mind offline for just long enough to stop thinking himself into a flurry. He almost wishes he were still a machine. 

He shouldn't hurt. 

He's the coldest an Android could be and yet here he is, quivering like a child. Sadness. 

He looks at the grout between the tiles as his mind betrays him, playing one of Gavin's favorite "car songs". 

_Back and forth, we're always falling in between.  
The cracks in the floor board won't offer you a thing.  
And I'm naive, but I know happiness is fleeting.  
And yet we pursue it on in hopes that we won't need it._

He's not naive. But just for once he wishes he were. Watching the waves on the ECG machine chokes him enough to make him wish he didn't know what it was. A human child, ignorant to the world. 

_Stay with me  
I can't feel these words like I did when we were young.  
Trading in ink for false peace of mind.  
Well, I've been choking on words for far too long now._

He never was young, but he'd hope for just a moment he could have turned back time to say what he needed to. It'd fall on deaf ears this time around. 

"Dammit." 

Hardly ever one to curse, it just feels appropriate now. He's at a loss. His mind is a thousand miles away, stuck above and below and behind him in every way possible. It falls from his lips. Hitting the floor and shattering so loudly to him that it seems it could have awoken Gavin from his sleep. 

It'll be eternal soon. Nines has scanned his vitals. He knows he's slipping and forces himself to accept it no matter how much he doesn't want to. 

He wonders briefly if there's a way he could reverse his deviancy. Go back to being a robot to order around on a war field. 

He can't though, and it threatens him. Scares him, even. Though he wouldn't admit it. 

He thinks for a moment about talking to Gavin anyway. Knows about those studies that say they can hear you. 

He decides against it. Instead he thinks about one of _his_ favorite songs. 

_But if I stayed away by a thread from the glory path  
And made my life harder lying 'bout the stupid shit I say  
Then you wouldn't know a single thing about how I feel about you  
And all those really dumb things people feel  
I'll take the bumpy road  
it'll probably break my legs  
As long as I don't show you what's ruining my head._

Against his better judgement, his hand grasps Gavin's, senses the cold under his skin and pushes his own hair back with the other. Before he knows it, he kneeling to the side of the bed, on his knees, holding Gavin's hand and just bowing there. Accepting defeat. Offering it to the reaper beside him. 

He sure loves a parting gift with his souls. 

His face is pressed into the white sheet beside Gavin's leg and he huffs an exhale one last time squeezing the hand that's limp between his fingers with a finality he wishes didn't exist, pours his last goodbye into it.

He doesn't notice Hank and Connor still outside the door. Thinking they left in the minutes past, he lets himself loose before their eyes and they both spy in with a sadness. 

Nines doesn't pick up on the sound of the monitors, suddenly being yanked from his quiet time by nurses calmly taking his place by the bed. They weren't in a hurry, they knew this was coming, and it was peaceful as such a situation could be. 

In the time it takes him to step back, he remembers the lead up. 

Remembers Gavin's behavior changing, just a little less rough around the edges. Not enough for others to notice, but enough for Nines. 

Remembers him passing out in the break room after he complained about being dizzy earlier. 

Remembers calling the medical line when Gavin let him know he was feeling worse and worse. Staying in his room with him, looking much too official for Gavin's liking, but staying nonetheless. 

He doesn't remember the ambulance that took Gavin to the hospital. He wasn't there for that. Wasn't there for the EMTs handling his unconscious body onto a gurney and rushing him to ER. Certainly wasn't there to watch them hook him up, or later tell the DPD family that they would 'keep him comfortable'. 

That's just code for "He's going to die. Sorry."

Still entirely unknown what lead to that downward spiral in health, but watching him crash and burn so fast hurt worse than he was willing to admit.

He will admit, though hesitantly, that he cried again as he watched them take Gavin from his room. It wasn't a flurry of hastened nurses and doctors, no, it was calm removal of wires and tubes writing quick notes and wheeling him away in solemn silence. 

When he stepped out, he was startled by Connor and Hank, standing there, silent in their grief, while he was still unable to hear. 

They click back on. 

"How long have you been there?" 

"Long enough. It's okay to be upset, Nines. It's human."

Something about the word human left a bad taste on his tongue now. Humans die. They're unreliable. They go out without a goodbye. They hurt everyone around them when they cease to exist.

_"Well I'm not."_  
-  
 _Destruction of self, this is old magic  
With all of its past and presents to share  
Numbing agent. Numbing agent  
Destruction of self, this is old magic  
With all of its past and presents to share  
Numbing agent.   
Numbing!_  
-Numbing Agent, Royal Coda

**Author's Note:**

> My grandfather passed away recently, pretty similarly to Gavin here, slow and calm and I needed to pour my grief into something so I didn't implode. 
> 
> Songs mentioned, in order:   
> Tamagotchi by Sea in the Sky   
> Lover Is A Day by Cuco  
> Numbing Agent by Royal Coda


End file.
